


Apparition

by Scarlet_Moon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Solaris - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Reunions, The Doctor (Doctor Who) is a Mess, set after Evolution of the Daleks (s03ep05)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29721147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet_Moon/pseuds/Scarlet_Moon
Summary: The Doctor lands on a mysterious planet whose only inhabitant is a curious, whimsical, and cruel creature that decides to give him a gift he never asked for.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	1. Visitor

**Author's Note:**

> It is a version of a fanfic I have previously posted here: https://ficbook.net/readfic/4754095

The view from his bedroom is nothing less than breathtaking. Symmetriads, formidable and majestic, are towering over the silky rose-tinted ocean. Asymmetriads, gnarled and broken, shily raise their heads above the water. From a distance mimoids look like writhing and squirming sinners in hell. The ocean, calm and indifferent and home to all of them, is stretching as far as he can see.

The copper shine of the red sun, rising over the surface of the water, still warm from the light of the scorching blue giant, fades when she comes close and wraps her arms around him. The Doctor holds his breath.

"I had such an awful dream, Doctor. We were on some sort of beach, really close, but we couldn't touch. And it was so cold there, and then you suddenly disappeared and I was left there alone. I don't want to go back to sleep. It's still early, isn’t it? Is the red sun rising or setting? I like the red one. The corals look spooky when the blue one is out."

"Just rising. The blue one set two hours ago."

"Good," Not-Rose yawned. "Can we go to a mimoid today? I want to see them close before the TARDIS is ready to leave."

  
  


***

The TARDIS landed on Solaris by accident and exactly at the time when the Doctor wasn't planning on getting in trouble. The tired research team, consisting of three equally thin and worn out scientists, by that time were already so deeply depressed that the appearance of a wooden box at the station did not do very much to surprise them. The researchers confirmed the box was real (or rather, organic in nature) and that's when the interrogation ended.

The Doctor quickly realised that something on the planet was playing with their minds. The ocean, whose sentience no one really believed in until they spent a couple of days on Solaris, seemed to have telepathic abilities. The Doctor had no other explanation for the apparition of the "visitors'' that Snaut, drunk out of his head, told him about during his first night at the station.

"You just wait, they'll come to you, too…" he promised.

The Doctor waited: his curiosity hadn't yet faded then.

The jumpy, frightened team of truth-seekers at the time inspired his sympathy, admiration, and, he had to admit, a tiny bit of condescension of someone who is certain he won't repeat the same mistake as them. Snaut, even when drunk, was an expert in reading people and, as turned out, aliens. He just laughed in response to the Doctor's silent "Don't worry, that's not going to happen _to me_ " and brushed it off.

"A doctor… We all have doctorates here."

Humans had spent decades trying to establish contact with the water giant that covered the whole of the surface of the planet, but it either didn’t understand the signals or they were not receiving the answer. Or, on the contrary, the ocean understood them much better than they thought but had a sense of humour they could not fully appreciate. Or, possibly, it was guided by the best intentions in an attempt to make new alien friends. The Solarists, as the researchers called themselves, could not give an answer to that.

The Doctor decided to try himself. After all, nine hundred years of time and space, the kind of knowledge even the best libraries in the universe would be jealous of, reaction time that by far exceeded that of humans, sophisticated defenses against telepathic attacks, and hundreds of cosmic mysteries which he had over the years turned into scientific facts should have equipped him better than anyone else. The Doctor was indeed well-equipped to defend himself against the outside world. Still, he was just as powerless as humans when it came to the demons lurking in the depths of his own mind.

The attempts to put an end to this hopeless, neverending life of his had failed spectacularly, followed by ovations and praises and being hailed a hero by those who witnessed his desperate efforts to get into trouble too big to escape. The Doctor was firm in the conviction that there was nothing left for him to be afraid of. It seemed like the universe was having too much fun with him to let him go.

Sartorius had it worse than anyone else. He was never in sight and only moved around the station when the corridors were empty. The Doctor had a couple of quick exchanges with him through the closed door of his room and once managed to catch a glimpse of a wide-brimmed straw hat just before the door shut. Sartorius was tortured by panic attacks and laughed hysterically at the Doctor’s offer of help. Snaut only sneered. To him, drinking himself to oblivion seemed the best way to keep the visitors away.

The third one, Gibarian, wore round glasses which were incessantly slipping down his nose and had lost so much weight that his skin was hanging off the bones like an oversized coat. He smiled shily, politely asked whether the Doctor liked their modest dinner, and shrieked in terror at every unexpected noise behind his back. There were no more humans at the station.

The first couple of nights the Doctor didn’t feel like sleeping as Time Lords were able to stay awake much longer than human beings. He attempted to put together the convoluted, bewildering stories the crew had told him about the planet, studied the volumes written by the Solarists, tried to get Sartorius and Gibarian to introduce him to their “visitors”, and sent probes into the ocean. None of that got him any closer to solving the mystery of what was going on.

“You’ll make it worse, you fool,” warned Snaut. “You think we haven’t tried it yet? Think you are so clever?”

The Doctor never voiced his answer to that very question.

The probes did not show anything. One got trapped somewhere in the water and stopped responding and the other washed up on a small mimoid island and soon also died. Snaut said nothing. The Doctor did manage to attract the ocean’s attention but not quite the way he had planned.

For the first time she appeared in the morning of his third day at the station. The Doctor by then knew very little about the visitors. The crew weren’t particularly keen on going into detail. He soon realised why.

Over the past few months, as a way to keep nightmares at bay, the Doctor had slept rarely and only when his body demanded rest. He knew that being alone and having shields down often provoked the thoughts that he usually managed to keep away, so he wasn’t really surprised when upon waking up he saw her on the edge of the bed.

Loose hair, pink lips, she sat there, wrapped in the rays of the rising red sun, so true and so real that the Doctor almost forgot she was no longer anywhere within his reach. A lump rose in his throat but his hand reached for her and met her fingers halfway.

“Rose.”

The name was soft on his tongue and so rarely spoken he almost jumped every time he heard it. She was a phantom, an apparition in his harrowing dreams but always disappeared before the Doctor could catch her hand. But not now. He needed another moment before he realised what was going on.

The Doctor ripped his hand out of hers and jumped out of bed. Not-Rose followed him with a confused look on her face.

“No-no-no-no-no. Not this face, not her,” he hissed. “Don’t you dare touch her face.”

“Doctor? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t pretend that you don’t understand. I don’t know what you are trying to achieve, I don’t know how you are doing it, but it’s a very, very cheap trick.”

“Doctor!” she exclaimed. “Can you explain what is going on?”

“No, _you_ are going to explain what you want and why you are tormenting the crew. If that’s your idea of hospitality, I have to disappoint you.”

“What’s wrong, Doctor?” she asked softly and stepped towards him with so much tenderness in her eyes that he couldn’t cope.

The Doctor covered his face with his hands and stepped back.

“Don’t come closer.”

“Doctor…”

“Don’t come closer. I don’t know what you are but those people don’t mean any harm. They are simply researchers and want to establish contact. There is no need to torture them. If they have hurt you, I guarantee, they didn’t realise that. Just let me know and I promise, I can help stop it.”

“You are frightening me.”

The Doctor let out a desperate sigh.

“Please stop. I don’t think I can take it for too long.”

“Okay,” she said decisively. “What is the last thing that you can remember before this conversation? Because our memories are clearly very different.”

“Well…” the Doctor muttered to himself. “You are either a metamorph, or it’s a perception filter, or you are a figment of my imagination, or even a real physical being created from my memories and you really think you are Rose. The first two options are the most likely and I have to say, I’m impressed. I wouldn’t immediately rule out the third, but in that case, considering the tactile contact, it’s a very strong hallucination and it’s dangerous for humans. The human brain is a very delicate organ and may not be able to withstand it for too long, so I’m begging you, just let them go. And if it’s the fourth, then I’m so sorry, but you are mistaken, and if you give me a bit more information, then we can think together about what to do and how we can help you.

“I’m beginning to think that you are the one possessed.”

“All right… wait here.”

The Doctor ran out of the room and rushed towards the laboratory, where Snaut usually worked at that time. He wasn’t at all surprised when the dishevelled, nervous alien swung the door open and stormed inside.

“What do you know about these creatures? What have you managed to find out? They have a physical form. Have you studied what they are made of? Snaut!”

The scientist sighed, put away the vial, and slowly turned towards the Doctor.

“So you’ve had a visitor. Well well”.

“We need to find out what they are made of. It may help us work out what the ocean is.”

“Neutrinos,” Snaut replied.

The Doctor froze.

“What?”

“Neutrinos. Are you deaf or what?”

“But that’s impossible! Neutrinos practically don’t interact with matter! If that’s the case, we shouldn’t be able to perceive them in any way!”

“Yeah, there shouldn’t be telepathic oceans either and this wretched planet should have been ripped off the orbit a long time ago. What kind of universe do you think you live in?”

The Doctor shrugged.

“Those bastards are unkillable,” Snaut went on. “I don’t know how they do it but you just can’t get rid of them. We’ve tried everything. Nothing worked. Even when there is nothing left to regenerate, they just reappear. Sartorius has already lost it. Gibarian has been holding on pretty well but he’s beginning to give up, too. You’ve seen him.”

“You tried to kill them?”

Snaut looked at him with disdain.

“What else are you suggesting we do with those monsters?”

“Why is the very first thing that occurs to you, humans, is always to kill!” the Doctor scowled. “Why do you always have to destroy what you don’t understand? Have you ever considered there might be other ways to solve the problem?”

Snaut did not get defensive.

“You’ll see… Just wait a couple of days. I’d love to hear your thoughts then.”

“All right. As soon as I work out what they are and what they want.”


	2. Imprint

When the Doctor returned, she was not in the room. Almost disappointed, he scanned the air around where she had sat with the sonic screwdriver. Neutrinos were abundant there, just like everywhere else.

Talking to Gibarian, who stuttered, laughed to himself, and could barely finish a sentence without going off on a tangent, didn’t get him anywhere, except for one thing:

“The ocean is playing with us, my dear Doctor,” Gibarian said. “Do you know how children would sometimes ruin an anthill, just to see what would happen? With no spite whatsoever, out of pure curiosity and, maybe, a little bit of the innate human urge to destroy? To it, we are just ants.”

The Doctor shook his head.

“Those ‘visitors’ are no more than ideas. You are the ones tormenting yourselves.”

Gibarian did not argue. When he raised his eyes, they were tired and hazy but kind.

“Maybe it’s a gift, not a curse,” he smiled. “An act of forgiveness”.

That night he killed himself.

The turmoil that ensued, Gibarian’s pale face, the distressed, frantic Snaut, Sartorius, who still wouldn’t leave his room, the lifeless body that the Doctor had to push into the freezer shook him much more than he had expected. When he returned to his bedroom, she was waiting there.

“Where have you been?”

Even if she was mostly made of neutrinos, she still had a physical form (the Doctor had felt it) and that meant she couldn’t just disappear.

“I was here,” she said with surprise. “You told me to wait and you were acting so strangely that I didn’t follow you when you left. What’s happened? You’re so pale.”

“I came here a few hours ago and you were not here.”

She laughed awkwardly.

“What do you mean, a few hours ago? You were out for twenty minutes max.”

The Doctor nodded towards the window.

“The red sun is setting. When we talked, it was rising.”

Already confused, now she seemed really frightened.

“Doctor, I don’t understand what is happening but it’s something about this planet. It’s affecting us in a weird way. I don’t know why you are saying these things.”

“Come on,” he said and took her hand in his.

The Doctor was walking so fast that she, a good seven inches shorter, had to practically run behind him. When they reached the laboratory, she looked around suspiciously and pressed her head into her shoulders.

“Look,” the Doctor said in a calm and soft voice. “There is an ocean on this planet. It’s sentient. Besides, we think that it’s telepathic. We haven’t quite worked out yet why, but it sends us visions of people that… are imprinted in our memory. I know you may think that you are Rose, but Rose is in the parallel universe, with her family. I’m so sorry but everything that you remember is what I know about her. I’m sorry, I should have watched my mental shields better. I think it managed to sneak into my mind while I was sleeping.”

“You trying to tell me that I’m not real?”

“You may be perfectly real. I don’t know how you were born and what you are but I think you are more than just a hallucination. But your memories are not.”

She shook her head.

“You’ve almost called me a hallucination, Doctor. How do you know that you are real?” she asked defensively.

“I cannot answer that. But I would like to run a small test and, if you want, I can test both of us. Will you let me?”

The Doctor outstretched his hand and she hesitantly placed her palm in it. He filled two vials with their blood and after a short time working at the microscope asked her to come closer.

“Look,” he said and she shot him a suspicious look but bent over the microscope. “The blood structure of Time Lords. Our cells can regenerate more quickly because of a special type of platelets.”

He put another slide under the microscope. The blood most likely belonged to Sartorius.

“This is human blood,” explained the Doctor and replaced it with yet another specimen. “Here is yours.”

The cells were moving around frantically and chaotically and unnaturally fast, as if propelled by something invisible. She gasped and stepped back.

“I know, you don’t mean me any harm,” the Doctor said gently. He didn’t really know but couldn’t imagine those hands doing anything but good. “But we’re stuck. I need your help to work out what is going on and how to get us both out of it.”

She was strong – had to be, that’s how the Doctor remembered her, – but her eyes still glistened with tears and he shuffled uncomfortably. Then she blinked them off and asked calmly:

“All right, in that case, what do you think I am?”

The Doctor shook his head.

“I don’t know but I’ll try to find out.”

  
  


***

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

She was always somewhere near because she started panicking when left alone for longer than a few minutes. Tests showed nothing useful. Her body clearly contained matter but its origin remained a mystery.

Soon after Gibarian’s suicide they found the body of a tall dark-skinned woman exactly at the spot where they’d discovered his. The cause of her death was never established. There was no external damage or poisonous substances in her blood.

Even Sartorius came to see. A piercing, anguished shriek coming out of his locked room didn’t stop for a moment until he returned. “At least they don’t walk through walls…” muttered Snaut waving his glass, the liquid inside sloshing about precariously. There was no sign of his visitor and the Doctor didn’t want to think why.

“She got stuck in the parallel universe. Humans got themselves into something they should have stayed away from… We had to pay the price.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

She sat on the bench in the lab where the Doctor was analysing the samples from the woman’s body and pressed her knees into her chest, listless and quiet. The Doctor couldn’t even imagine what a living creature must be going through after learning that everything it had ever thought of itself was not true.

Since they found the woman, she was particularly unsettled. The Doctor didn’t know if her consciousness was independent or if she was picking up some of his own thoughts, but she understood everything much better than he would have preferred. After all, in some way she was Rose.

“Look…”

The Doctor came closer and squatted down in front of her so that they were at the same eye level. Her gaze was pained when she raised her head to look at him.

“I’m really, really sorry and I don’t know what will happen when I leave…” he hesitated. “But maybe together we will be able to find out who you are and how…”

“I only exist while you are on this planet, don’t I?”

The Doctor couldn’t lie to her.

“Very likely.”

“In that case… Can you just fly away? Right now?”

Taken by surprise, the Doctor wasn’t sure how to respond. Finally, he sighed and shook his head.

“This planet has an unusual gravity field and it is affecting the TARDIS badly. We had a very rough landing and she is mending herself. I can’t even go inside to get equipment.”

“We’ve gone and done it again, haven’t we, Doctor? Got ourselves into a lot of trouble.”

She smiled softly, Rose’s eyes and lips and her voice caressing his name. The Doctor swallowed thickly and jumped up on his feet.

“So… how about a short trip to the ocean? I want to try a couple of things.”

“Wait…” she hesitated and the Doctor, ready to run outside, turned back around. “The visitors who came to the others… They are torturing them, aren’t they? What if I start doing the same? Because I don’t want to.”

The corner of his mouth twitched nervously but he managed a smile.

“Then that’s the answer,” the Doctor said cheerfully. “Now, chop-chop. The sentient ocean is waiting. That’s definitely not something I’d seen before. Every day is a new adventure, isn’t it?”


	3. Oblivion

“Listen, I know you were going to sleep tonight but… do you mind if I stay in the room? I won’t disturb you, promise. It just… feels spooky when I’m alone. I can’t explain. It’s just… the kind of feeling, you know, as if I’m drowning?”

The Doctor sighed heavily and pulled her closer in... reassurance? apology? He didn’t know. She pressed into his chest tentatively, her arms wrapped around herself, and hid her face on his shoulder.

She was perfect, impeccable, just like he remembered. An immaculate copy created from his memories, she even smelled like Rose. Like when her hand stayed in his for a bit longer than usual, when a happy-to-get-out-of-it-alive embrace brought them so close he was almost ready to overcome the fear of letting her too deep into his hearts, like when she would suddenly stop laughing, blush, and look away. Sometimes he could feel her smell on his skin long after she disappeared into her room on the TARDIS.

"I'm sorry it turned out like that," said the Doctor. They had discovered that the "visitors" were unable to stay away from the donors of their memories for too long.

She didn't need to eat or sleep. She still could and even did but that was more out of habit and the desire to give him at least a couple of hours alone. Sometimes she had dreams. Those were mostly nightmares, probably something out of his shared memories with Rose or maybe his selfish, cruel, and lovesick fantasies about her life without him in the parallel universe.

"Doctor…" she called quietly and pulled at the long sleeves of her shirt. "Could I be a copy of her and not just your memories of her? You know, it's a strange ocean and the TARDIS is here, so maybe somehow…”

She didn't finish the sentence as she already knew the answer. The Doctor shook his head. His constant monitoring (he didn't even know why he was doing it anymore) was showing increasing brain activity. An embodiment of his memories, each day she was becoming more and more conscious and independent. That didn't affect her physical structure: her body was still eighty per cent neutrinos, stabilised by an artificial magnetic field.

Maybe if he thought hard enough, he'd be able to change her form to something else. Something painful, agonising from his past, something he'd been hiding for years, something she’d helped him survive after the War. Not-Rose clasped his hand in hers, sensing his distress. Of course she did. She was straight out of his head.

"Maybe it's a gift, not a curse," Gibarian had told him.

Sometimes she would forget that she wasn't Rose. Sometimes he would, too. The Doctor decided to put his time on the planet to good use. After all, maybe he, an alien that had seen things the Solarists couldn't even imagine, would be able to solve the mystery of the living ocean whose language even the TARDIS couldn't translate.

"And you said they wouldn't get you…" Snaut told him one day.

He had almost got over Gibarian's death. Hadn't quite stopped drinking but the alcohol supply at the station was limited and he had no problem with maths. 

"What's that supposed to mean?" the Doctor asked, annoyed. "I think, contrary to your expectations, I haven't lost my mind. As I said, the guests have nothing to do with it. They are simply an embodiment of what is already in our minds. We are torturing ourselves and I'm not sure that that's what the ocean wants."

Snaut waved his hand dismissively.

"You are deeper in it than we are. Listen… I talked to Sartorius. He’s working on a device, a magnetic field destabiliser. He thinks it will be able to break up the neutrinos.

"Are you still looking for ways to kill them? They are a new, unique form of life and all you can think about from day one is how to destroy them.”

"They’ll snuff it anyway when we get out of here. It's parasitism, not symbiosis, whatever you might think."

"They have their own consciousness and it grows every day. Maybe one day they can become independent."

"And then what? Build a shelter? Set up a colony on a mimoid? Bring them with us when we leave? Do you realise that the ocean is keeping them from falling apart? Where is she now?"

"She is sleeping."

"That's not what I mean…" muttered Snaut. "Where is _she_? Is she even alive?"

The question took the Doctor by surprise and he flinched.

"Yes. She is alive and safe with her family."

"Did you ditch her or did she do a runner? Okay, okay, none of my business, don't look at me like that. You just… you know. Don't get carried away."

When the Doctor returned, she was sitting on the bed with her knees pressed to her chest, pale as a ghost, and her lips were trembling.

"You not sleeping?" he asked, trying to avoid eye contact.

"No. I couldn't go to sleep. Decided to wait until you got back. I didn't want to go after you. How’s the TARDIS?"

"Mending," the Doctor said bleakly. "She lost a lot of energy but should be fine in a few days".

"Uh-ha," she replied and said nothing else. She stayed around, passed him tools, sometimes looked at his work over his shoulder but didn't ask questions.

The Doctor almost hated her for looking so much like Rose, for her damned sacrifices, for trying not to impose, for going through whatever she was going through to stay away from him for at least a short while, for wilting so quickly. For how a smile never touched Rose's lips, for how unhappy she looked. Maybe somewhere very far away, in a world beyond his reach, she was hurting just as much as he was. That thought shouldn't be any consolation, it shouldn't have even occurred to him, but in reality, Time Lords weren't that superior to humans.

She raised her head, frightened like a cornered animal, thin and tortured, just like the last time he saw her.

"Rose," he whispered: he didn't know what else to call her.

Her face in his hands, she cried as he peppered kisses over her forehead, cheeks, and closed eyelids, and if the Doctor really hated anyone for the salty taste on his lips, that was himself.

"It's all right. As soon as the TARDIS lets us in, I'll think of something. I'll build a device that will maintain the magnetic field. It's going to be all right, I promise you."

"You really not going to leave me here?" she asked in a broken voice, having long accepted the role of a gift from the excessively hospitable ocean.

"Of course not. Of course not. There’s so much we haven’t seen yet. We have a whole life ahead of us."

Maybe, if he was lucky and if he asked the universe very nicely, she wouldn't even have to leave him so soon. Possibilities were endless. Everything that he had denied himself was right there, in front of him.

So soft, so responsive to his touch, she desired him just as much as he needed her. Her smooth, gentle form complemented the sharp angles of his body perfectly. This incarnation was made for her, moulded for her lips and her hands, matched her body perfectly, inside out. His most sacred, most elaborate fantasies faded when faced with reality.

"Rose…"

For her, the name that escaped his lips in oblivion was enough. Her voice wrapped around the sounds he had been ashamed even to dream of was what pushed him over the edge. It was blissful, not having to do what was right, not sending her away because her mother was there, not leaving her forever because trying to get through to her would have been catastrophic, not thinking about anything at all. Over the past nine hundred years, he had surely deserved it.

"What do you think…" she whispered later, her hair tickling his neck, the tips of his fingers caressing her spine. "Why is it doing it? I mean, the ocean?"

"I don't know, Rose," the Doctor sighed. "I don't think I care."


	4. Going back

Sometimes all a living creature needs is a little bit of love. Asymmetriads didn't seem quite as limp to him anymore, the Doctor himself didn't feel quite as broken. They soon almost forgot about her inability to stay away: that problem didn't arise. After so much time apart, he couldn't imagine how he would voluntarily choose being alone.

Snaut silently shook his head. Fresh, sober, and clean-shaven (Sartorius's device worked but the Doctor didn't know the details), he spoke convincingly enough to make the others on Earth believe in his stories about visitors. The institute was going to send another research team to Solaris but by that time the TARDIS would already be far away.

"You are playing with fire, Doctor…" he said as the Doctor dragged a bulky device buried under a pile of cables aboard the ship.

"No, we've checked everything. I have put her in an isolation room that doesn't let any signals from the outside in and her magnetic field was intact. The main device is going to charge from the TARDIS and at first she'll have to stay in her vicinity but then we'll think of something. Maybe a battery to let her move freely."

"If only you put your big brain to good use…"

"I've used it for the common good for far too long. I'm sick and tired of having to do the right thing. Especially considering that ‘the right thing’ in this case means killing her like the others."

"So that’s a goodbye, Doctor?" asked Snaut, ignoring the girl who had appeared in the doorway.

"Yes. Good luck, Snaut."

The Doctor offered his hand and he shook it weakly.

"And you. You'll need it."

Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor grabbed the lever, paused for a moment, and sent her a wide smile. Everything was just as it should: the calming hum of the rotor, the soft light spilling around the console room, and Rose, smiling at him in return.

"Ready?" he asked, shaking off the nervous quiver that ran down his spine. It was groundless as they'd checked everything many times.

She nodded hesitantly, a brave smile still on her face although he could see that she was just as tense as he was. The Doctor pulled the lever. He didn’t have a particular location in mind and was just going to send the TARDIS into space to buy them a bit of time to rest and recover. The ship wailed loudly, the floor underneath their feet vibrated, and the few seconds that they needed to leave the planet's gravity field seemed painfully long.

She disappeared in the blink of an eye. The Doctor didn't even immediately realise what had happened. Her clothes that had also been woven by the ocean, just like her body, had vanished, too. Only the useless magnetic field bracelet fell on the grating with a loud thud and bounced a couple of times.

The Doctor didn't move.

And then he let out a loud, anguished cry.

  
  


***

"Maybe it's time to let it go?" Snaut sighed.

The Doctor shook his head.

His hands in his pockets, he stood in front of the kitchen window overlooking a giant symmetriad. The blue sun was setting and the red one was only going to start rising in a couple of hours.

It had been three days since his return to Solaris but she never came. Nobody came to anyone anymore, including the new guy who joined the crew two days ago.

"Who is she?" asked Snaut.

The Doctor said softly:

"Her name is Rose. She… used to travel with me."

"And what happened?"

"The ghosts came," he answered vaguely.

"So what are you going to do?"

The Doctor rubbed his face with his hands.

"I don't know."

He didn't add that he didn't want to do anything but Snaut understood without words.

It didn't matter how long he'd been waiting, she never came. She wasn't even supposed to. She was a fantasy, created by his joint efforts with the ocean.

When the Doctor was leaving the station, it was busy and bustling with life. A new team of Solarists had come to replace Snaut and Sartorius. The TARDIS's disappearance went unnoticed.

He didn't really remember what was next and he didn’t want to remember. For Martha it had only been a couple of days since he left to let her spend some time with her family but she, a proper member of the TARDIS crew, had already managed to find trouble for them both. The Earth was like a magnet for trouble (or maybe it was him).

A living sun (barely interesting after encountering a sentient ocean), a couple of other misfortunes, and then, finally, oblivion. In some way, letting go was cathartic. John Smith took over his worries and the Doctor would have lied had he said that he wanted to return. His double was put together in haste and was in no way a sublime creature but the Doctor had already spent all his energy making a perfect one.

After that he learned how not to think and not to wait for her to come back every second, in each corner of the universe, in each laugh and flicker of blonde hair. Somewhere far away she probably wasn’t waiting for him anymore either. And she shouldn’t have, he wasn’t worth it.

And then one day she appeared, just as he was beginning to lose faith.

***

_Much later_

“I can’t believe that we did it. It’s really over now,” murmured Rose, so tired she could barely speak.

Jackie dried her wet hair with a towel.

“You’re drippin’. To be honest, I thought he’d suggest you should stay with the other one.”

Rose turned around in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Jackie said absent-mindedly. “He said the other one is just like him. Same thoughts, same memories and all that.”

“Mum, but he’s not the Doctor.” 

“I know, I know, but at least he’s human, without all these alien… things.”

“I like the ‘alien things’,” Rose retorted angrily.

“Uh-ha,” replied Jackie and Rose decided not to ask how her words had been interpreted.

When she came down, the Doctor was in the living room, hands in pockets, his hair ruffled, the same pinstriped suit, as if nothing had changed over the past two years. Maybe it hadn’t for him.

“I don’t get how you manage not to get messy.”

“A minimal number of sweat glands and a dirt-resistant solution from the thirty-fourth century for my suit.”

“When the TARDIS has grown, I know what we should get Mum for Christmas,” said Rose feigning as much seriousness as he did.

They couldn’t bear the silence for more than a few moments. Arms around his neck, her happy laugh tickling his skin, the double beat of his hearts against her ribcage, Rose brushed her lips over his. She didn’t know how much time passed like that, in his embrace, but the Doctor could probably tell with split-second accuracy. 

“I thought I wouldn’t be able to get back,” she said weakly. For a short while she allowed herself to feel like she was still nineteen, when he would take care of all the monsters. “At first the dimension cannon didn’t work at all and then I couldn’t get to the right universe. There are too many of them and they are just too similar. Similar is not the same, is it?” Rose asked as her mother’s words were still ringing in her ears.

“No, Rose. Not at all.”


End file.
